The Korean biopharma Medytox and Jupiter, Fla.–based Dyadic International are partnering to develop vaccines that would protect against multiple COVID-19 variants.
The companies plan on using Dyadic’s C1-cell protein production platform in the development of the vaccines.
The vaccines would use a similar strategy to flu vaccines, which are often trivalent or quadrivalent. The former is designed to afford protection against three virus types, while the latter targets four viruses.
Medytox has explored other gene expression platforms and has concluded that the fungi-derived C1 expression system is “the most realistic technology to develop and manufacture multi-valent (i.e., tri-valent, and tetra-valent) vaccines, rapidly and affordably, against COVID-19 mutant viruses without the need for a large-scale bioreactor facility,” said Gi-Hyeok Yang, head of R&D at Medytox, in a press release.